Research in Motion (RIM), the Canadian company, which operates BlackBerry, provides its customers with their own encryption key and does not possess a master key. According to RIM, in its system, there is no “back door” through which either RIM or any third party can gain access to the key or the customer's data.
However, the Indian government was concerned that this level of encryption makes it impossible to monitor BlackBerry messages for national security purposes and that BlackBerrry's strong encryption technology could be used for terrorist or criminal activity. As per newspaper reports, on August 31, 2010, the Government of India accepted RIM's proposal for “lawful access by law enforcement agencies” of encrypted BlackBerry data. In December 2010, RIM reportedly provided the government a cloud computing-based system which would enable security agencies to lawfully intercept BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) messages in a comprehensible format but not BlackBerry Enterprise Service, that is, corporate emails.
he Draft Rules of Information Technology Act 2011 incorporate the government's stand vis-à-vis BlackBerry into law because they require an intermediary to provide information to government agencies, which are lawfully authorised for investigative, protective, cyber security or intelligence activity. In sum, the Draft Rules provide the key to the back door long sought after by the government and leave no doubt that security concerns will prevail in law over the interest in privacy through use of encryption by civil society.
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